Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Testing e-Commerce Sites - Some Guidelines

With the commencement of
internet, one of the fastest developing phases of the same are the e-commerce
platforms which help people buy anything and everything they want, sitting
right on their couch. However, with the massive advantages provided by the
e-commerce sites come various risks and problems which can cause havoc if not
dealt with on time. This is why it is absolutely important to test these sites
before they are released for public use.

Security Tests:When a
person is buying something online, in most cases they tend to pay with the help
of their credit or debit card or with the help of a net
banking procedure. While they do it, they trust the particular e-commerce site
with the details of their banks and hence it is absolutely important that their
details are protected by the admin of the site. Hence security testing becomes
very important in case of such sites to make sure that breaching he parameters
are next to impossible

Usability Tests: The
prime purpose of the e-commerce sites is to provide the customers with
desirable product which they can add to their cart and shop. Hence the sites
must be easily uploaded with new products in order to keep the customers
updated with the latest items as well as the old ones that were available
previously. Thus the usability testing is to be performed regularly on such websites.

User Friendly Interface Test:
No one will waste their time on understanding the complicated work structure of
the e-commerce site and hence will move on to a site with a simpler interface. Thus,
as and when the features of the e-commerce sites are being upgraded, tests must
be conducted to check that the user interface is still simple and it can be
handled with utmost ease.

Performance Tests: The
traffic on an e-commerce platform on a particular day is completely
unpredictable. Hence the sites should be prepared for zero traffic as well as a
huge surge of customers trying to buy products concurrently at the same time. This
makes performance testing along with stress testing an absolute vital part of
the software testing life cycle when it comes to the e-commerce sites.

The following tests can be
conducted in order to make sure that the e-commerce sites are up and running at
all times and are providing the customers with a superior experience while
using the same.

The accelerated
functional test cycle should be conducted with QA strategies and various
business process libraries which can be customized according to organizational
needs, paying special heed to reusable test scenarios.

With the help of
performance modelling frameworks, performance-critical business flows and
Service Level Agreement (SLA)-based performance reporting, the improvement in
the performance issues should be checked.

Features of the
e-commerce sites like data security testing, legal compliance checks, and
compliance with Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) should be
thoroughly tested with the help of Effective Test Data Management services.

As the customers are
capable of using various types of browsers as well as different devices and OS
to access a particular e-commerce site, hence the compatibility of the site
with these features must be checked.

In-house solutions like Functional Test Case
Generator should be used to form test cases from customised libraries.